A Little Cup of Aristotle

Underock1 said:
We do what we repeatedly do because of who we are. We are who we are because of what life has made us.
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Agree with the first part. Not so much the second.

In my view, life has only a peripheral effect on who I am. I determine what I do as well as who I am.

Too many people - and I've been guilty of this myself, many times - put the blame for their condition on life. "Life did this to me - I'm powerless to change it".

Bull-dinky.

Losers put the blame on life. Winners put the blame on themselves, and figure out how to change it.
 
SifuPhil said:
I'm guessing it means that we are what we DO, not what we SAY. People get hung up on words and ideas - look at political discussions - and they judge you not by what you do but by what you say.
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Fair enough. Then excellence is the next word that bugs me. How about substituting integrity?
We are what we repeatedly do. Integrity, then, is not an act but a habit.
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It's getting better. Now let me go think some more....;)
 
NancyNGA said:
Fair enough. Then excellence is the next word that bugs me. How about substituting integrity?

...

It's getting better. Now let me go think some more....;)
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Excellent. I think you can substitute almost any positive trait and it will work in there. I myself particularly like honor.
 
SifuPhil said:
... In my view, life has only a peripheral effect on who I am. I determine what I do as well as who I am.

Too many people - and I've been guilty of this myself, many times - put the blame for their condition on life. "Life did this to me - I'm powerless to change it".

Bull-dinky.

Losers put the blame on life. Winners put the blame on themselves, and figure out how to change it.
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I consider myself a winner as a result of - not in spite of - the negative conditions of my life. It did influence me, and I took some serious missteps along my way because of it. But I rose above it, and chose the better road, eyes open. I think that's what Interlock was getting at.
 
SifuPhil said:
Agree with the first part. Not so much the second.

In my view, life has only a peripheral effect on who I am. I determine what I do as well as who I am.

Too many people - and I've been guilty of this myself, many times - put the blame for their condition on life. "Life did this to me - I'm powerless to change it".

Bull-dinky.

Losers put the blame on life. Winners put the blame on themselves, and figure out how to change it.
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Phil, not ready to put the time in on a debate about this right now. I have come to the conclusion that none of us can act other than we do.
 
Underock1 said:
Phil, not ready to put the time in on a debate about this right now. I have come to the conclusion that none of us can act other than we do.
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That's okay, Rock - I've got sort of a full plate myself. When you're ready I'd love to discuss this with you - you've got some deep waters there, fella. ;)
 
Yes I totally agree. To Aristotle, when you practice a moral virtue like courage, it may be a moral excellence. This happens
when you practice courage (for example) for its own sake, not for a reward, you do it habitually, and it is a stable genuine
part of your character. Moral excellences practiced in this way usually lead to a happy life. The happy medium is the moral
excellence--not too much and not too little. Not rash and not cowardly. Happiness develops over the course of your life because
of these moral excellences. We literally should excel at generosity, acting justly, honesty, etc.
Some moral/immoral actions have no medium, such as adultery and theft because they are always wrong.

I have taught Aristotle. so I know.
 
I'm backing off of "integrity." Too broad. Makes the quote just sound like a definition. "Excellence" works for me, or maybe "virtue."

But why doesn't it work for negatives too?

We are what we repeatedly do. Greed, then, is not an act but a habit.
 
SifuPhil said:
~ Aristotle


Do you agree or disagree? Why?
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My granny used to tell me something similar.
Oh... I can't either agree or disagree. I feel that what we do may show the inclinations of our general character, but a person also may be devoid of character or good deeds most of their life, but for some unknown reason exhibit one moment of heroism or excellence surpassing most other people in an unplanned moment...such as someone who hears a scream coming from a burning building and enters risking their own life to help another. Also someone can have done good all their life only to do something incomprehensibly horrible out of cowardice or prejudice.
I can't say yes or no arrrrrghhhhh........
 
SifuPhil said:
I'm guessing it means that we are what we DO, not what we SAY. People get hung up on words and ideas - look at political discussions - and they judge you not by what you do but by what you say.
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Yes, politics and debates generally rely on what is said with a smaller amount of what has been done. A person can however say something so ugly it won't matter to you what they ever did in their life. I'll give you an example from my own life. I had a job delivering things & got paired up with this other guy. He was driving. As we were going down the street he made a very slight swerve towards a black man walking down the street. He said " 10 points for ' insert N word'. It made no difference to me who he was or what he had done up until that point. I was so repulsed I quit my job. There was no way I was going anywhere with him or speaking to him again.
 
SifuPhil said:
Agree with the first part. Not so much the second.

In my view, life has only a peripheral effect on who I am. I determine what I do as well as who I am.

Too many people - and I've been guilty of this myself, many times - put the blame for their condition on life. "Life did this to me - I'm powerless to change it".

Bull-dinky.

Losers put the blame on life. Winners put the blame on themselves, and figure out how to change it.
Click to expand...


I agree. Some of the most difficult, bitter and unhappy people I've known have had the belief that everything is always somebody/something else's fault and that they have no power/obligation to try to change it or themselves for the better and so go through life either in a perennial pool of self-pity or else perennially pissed off at the world.

I'm no pollyanna by any stretch, but I (after my initial fit of panic or anger or whatever) try to say "OK, this is what we've got. Now what can we do about it (or with it)?" It doesn't necessarily stop the oncoming train, but it does help you deal with it better and maybe find constructive ways to improve the situation or a more peaceful way to deal with it.
 
SifuPhil said:
That's okay, Rock - I've got sort of a full plate myself. When you're ready I'd love to discuss this with you - you've got some deep waters there, fella. ;)
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No offense to anyone meant, but I think that when we say we have no choice but to act as we do, it's a cop out. Having worked in the legal field for so many years, I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've heard the "bad childhood" thing, or the "he messed with my girlfriend and so I had to shoot him." Or the now famous "affluenza" defense, or a zillion others -- "I left my baby in the hot car because I had to go to work" type stuff.

I think we all make choices every day and we and we only are responsible for the outcome and collateral damage, regardless of what "life" has thrust at us in the past. To think otherwise makes us all just automatons passing through, with no chance of improvement, redemption, honor, excellence, or whatever we want to call it, and makes life utterly pointless and devoid of any kind of meaning.
 
Yes. There are even those who victimize and view themselves as being the victim. The perpetual victim. The one who never ever under any circumstances accepts responsibility for their own actions or choices. Ones who when cornered with the truth might at the very most admit to doing something but will always rationalize it or blame it on someone or something else.
 
I do think 2 people can go through an identical experience and come out with two separate lessons from the same experience. How the mind will grasp the experience, the ability to learn from the experience, the emotional side effects, belief systems already in place and learning experiences that led up to the event all have affect on the results. Many many things.
 
BlunderWoman said:
I do think 2 people can go through an identical experience and come out with two separate lessons from the same experience. How the mind will grasp the experience, the ability to learn from the experience, the emotional side effects, belief systems already in place and learning experiences that led up to the event all have affect on the results. Many many things.
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Thank you, BW. I am looking for some way to be agreeable on here. I agree with that completely.
 
BlunderWoman said:
Yes. There are even those who victimize and view themselves as being the victim. The perpetual victim. The one who never ever under any circumstances accepts responsibility for their own actions or choices. Ones who when cornered with the truth might at the very most admit to doing something but will always rationalize it or blame it on someone or something else.
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I was once married to one of those people, and I know a few others also. If they walked out in front of a train, it was the train's fault, or God's fault, but never their own fault for not looking where they were going. Most of those people become very bitter and angry.
 
BlunderWoman said:
I do think 2 people can go through an identical experience and come out with two separate lessons from the same experience. How the mind will grasp the experience, the ability to learn from the experience, the emotional side effects, belief systems already in place and learning experiences that led up to the event all have affect on the results. Many many things.
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No argument with that. But in the end we can let a bad experience color our whole life and drag us down, or we can choose to rise above it.
 
Butterfly said:
No argument with that. But in the end we can let a bad experience color our whole life and drag us down, or we can choose to rise above it.
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I agree with that . Except in the instances where a mind becomes damaged/hurt from either witnessing something so horrid it cannot recover, or being the victim of something so horrid it cannot recover. Especially in the developing early childhood. Some minds being more fragile than others. Once I met a woman in a laundry mat that was from Cambodia. We got to talking and I found her very interesting. We ended up going for lunch together. She told me a story of something she had seen in a war that I don't honestly think I could have ever shaken or recovered from had I witnessed that. She seemed to be functioning, but I never saw her again after that day, so I do not know how well she truly made it over that nightmare. She without realizing it had helped me with one of my largest hurdles in life in those few hours we had sat chatting. Someone with a mind that has been hurt by trauma or who is clinically depressed may not be able to rise above their own condition. So I would say that in the average circumstances most people should be able to rise above their past problems. There are though some horrendous things happening to some people that anyone would have a hard time rising above.
 

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